It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.

Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.

Ambition has no risk.

Act iii, Scene i.

Take away the sword;
States can be saved without it.

Act iii, Scene i.

In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As "fail".

Act iii, Scene i.

Our glories float between the earth and heaven
Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun.

My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

Chapter 1. This is the origin of the phrase "pursuit of the almighty dollar". Washington Irving coined the expression almighty dollar itself.